Brad Thor: State Of The Union

Rutledge glanced at his watch and though he knew time was very tight, decided he would wait just a little bit longer. After all, the Americans had something going for them that the Russians didn’t.

A MullandJacket,” repeated Harvath into his microphone, louder this time so Morrell could hear him over the roar of wind pouring through the Little Bird’s open doors. “It’s a very exclusive tweed coat made for hunting by a company called Holland and Holland. The president gave it to Gary a couple of years back as a gift on one of their pheasant trips and Draegar had one on in that surveillance tape.”

“And that’s what makes you think he’s been using Gary’s house as his home base?”

“Why not? It makes perfect sense. The FBI has pulled off their surveillance and it’s safer than checking in to a hotel or motel. Draegar’s not stupid. All we’d need to do is circulate his photo and sooner or later we’d have him.”

“Why not shack up with one of the sleepers?”

“I don’t think he trusts them. Would you? I agree with Sorce that the reason the antiques dealer bought it was because he was probably trying to back out. If you were having second thoughts, the best thing you could do would be to kill Draegar.” Harvath paused a moment before continuing. “No, he couldn’t risk counting on the sleepers to put him up. It could jeopardize the entire mission if they were caught together. He’d want somewhere he knew he could be completely safe. Besides, what better way to rub it in Gary’s face than to use his own place as a safe house?”

“You could burn it,” replied Morrell as an uneasy silence settled over them.

They watched as the winter sun sank below the horizon and the helicopter cut through the cold air, west, towards Fairfax. There were less than three hours to go until the State of the Union.

The Little Bird touched down in a field half a mile from Gary Lawlor’s home and rendezvoused with another helicopter transporting two HRT assault teams. In conjunction with Fairfax law enforcement, Harvath helped sketch a picture of Gary’s neighborhood, his property and then the house itself. He detailed all of the windows and doors and then discussed what he felt were the best entry points for the HRT teams, which had been labeled Red Team and Blue Team. Harvath and Alexandra, along with Morrell and his men, were labeled Gold Team. Though Director Sorce had been dead set against Alexandra carrying a gun, Harvath gave her his Beretta pistol anyway. In his mind, if they were all taking the same risks, they all deserved to be afforded the same protections.

Once the fine points of the takedown had been established and agreed to, the Fairfax officers transported the three assault teams in as far as they could. A perimeter had been established by uniformed officers for four blocks in every direction around Gary Lawlor’s home. Until Harvath said so, no one was getting in or out of that part of the neighborhood.

Both the MH-6 Little Bird and the HRT chopper were equipped with second generation Forward Looking Infrared and having them keep an eye on things from above made Harvath feel a lot better as he and the rest of his Gold Team crept through the woods bordering the rear of Gary’s property.

It was an eerie sensation, not only because he was right back where he had started from a week ago, but because whoever took the picture of him at Gary’s barbecue that he had found onboard theGagarin had come this exact same way.

When they reached the edge of the tree line, Harvath used his night vision goggles to scan the property. It didn’t come as much of a surprise that he wasn’t seeing anything. The other teams radioed in from their positions. Besides a car parked in the driveway in front, there were no other signs that anyone was home. The helicopters weren’t picking up anything from inside the house either. They all knew though, that that didn’t mean there wasn’t a surprise waiting for them. After all, had the same helicopters been there a week ago, when he was wearing his IR camouflage suit they would have had no idea Harvath was inside.

Everyone listened over their earpieces as the Red Team leader counted down the seconds before giving theGo command. Assaulters had positioned themselves under windows and alongside the house with ladders as Harvath and his team crept through the backyard and got ready to breach via the backdoor. To everyone who was there that night, the next several seconds seemed to last a lifetime.

When the command came, Red Team tossed flashbang grenades through the front windows and used shock rounds to blow the hinges off the front door. Blue Team used long poles to break the upper windows and pitch in their flashbangs while the rest of their team scrambled up ladders or tossed more flashbangs through the lower windows and prepared to dive in.

Harvath swung an enormous sledgehammer that one of the Fairfax police had given him and shattered the lock assembly on the mudroom door. He and Morrell were first in, followed by Alexandra and then the rest of the team.

The mudroom was littered with coats and other assorted items that had been knocked off of the pegs and shelves. A bucket of Oxyclean had spilled onto the floor and in the greenish glow of his night vision goggles Harvath thought he could make out a footprint.

Opening the door to the kitchen, Harvath yelled out, “Banger!” as Morrell pitched in an underhanded flashbang. The members of Gold Team turned their heads away from the blast and once the device had detonated, rushed into the room unopposed. None of them noticed the tripwires until it was too late.

Alexandra was the only one to hear the slight twang, like a piece of piano wire being plucked, followed by a barely audible pop as the explosive was engaged.

“We’ve got a body here,” began one of the members of Blue Team who had come in through one of the house’s second-story windows. He was quickly cut off by Alexandra’s frantic cries of, “Get out! Get out! It’s a trap!”

“Gold Team,” said Red Team’s leader with the calm and presence of mind that came with being a seasoned operative, “give us a Sit Rep. What are you looking at?”

Harvath’s eyes swept from side to side and then down to the ground, trying to see what Alexandra was yelling about. Morrell did the same, but soon they were both being yanked by their collars as Alexandra pulled them backwards.

“The house is booby trapped! It’s going to explode,” she yelled as the rest of Gold Team cleared the way behind her. “All teams pull your men back now!”

Gold Team barely made it out the back door before the house erupted in an incredible pillar of fire. Harvath had seen an explosion like that only once before in his life, and it was in an ATF video of a moonshiner who had convinced himself that with the case against him he had nothing left to live for and had decided to take every government agent into the afterlife with him that he could. The man had rigged his home with explosives, but had kept gallons upon gallons of accelerant contained in perforated gas cans so there’d be no real smell until it was already too late. The bizarre parallels between the explosions aside, Draegar either had known that someone would be on his trail eventually, or had left a little present for Gary on his eventual return home.

Gold Team was showered with broken glass and smoldering debris as they rolled across the backyard and tried to extinguish the burning embers that clung like red-hot coals to their Nomex suits. Had it not been for Alexandra, most of Gold Team would no longer be alive.

The explosives had been concentrated in the center of the house and the trip wires rigged so that entire assault teams would have time to make it inside before the fireworks started. Whoever Draegar was preparing for, he had made sure that there was very little possibility of them getting out alive.